Fear of a Bot Planet
| guests = | writer =Evan Gore, Heather Lombard | storyboards =Albert Calleros, Rodney Clouden, Doug Gallery | preceded_by =''Love's Labours Lost in Space'' | followed_by =''A Fishful of Dollars'' }} Fear of a Bot Planet is the fifth episode of Futurama Season One. It was written by Evan Gore and Heather Lombard, and co-directed by Ashley Lenz and Chris Sauve. Synopsis While attending a New New York Yankees blernsball game at Madison Cube Garden, Fry is told by Leela that Blernsball is a "jazzed up" version of baseball. Bender is offended that humans won't let robots compete in the blernsball league. Hermes calls the crew to report back to the office for a delivery mission. The delivery is to Chapek 9, a planet inhabited by human-hating robot separatists who kill humans on sight, so Bender is assigned the duty of performing the actual delivery. Bender claims that it is a robot-religious holiday, Robonikah, and doesn't have to work. Despite his made-up holiday, Bender must go on. Upon arriving at the planet, a resentful Bender is lowered to the surface using the ship's winch. Fry and Leela decide to throw a Robonikah party for Bender to show their appreciation. They receive a rushed message from Bender, who has been captured by the robot separatists when they found out he worked for humans. In order to avoid being killed on sight, Fry and Leela disguise themselves as robots, and infiltrate the robot society. After hiding out in a robot movie theater, Fry and Leela blend in with the crowd at the opening ceremonies of the daily human hunt. There they discover Bender is alive and playing the robots' prejudice for his own benefit, claiming he has killed a million billion humans on Earth. Fry and Leela reunite with Bender during the hunt in an abandoned robot porn shop, but he refuses their offer of rescue. Before Fry and Leela can leave, the other robots arrive and they are placed on trial for being human. After being sentenced to a life of tedious robot-type labor, they are dropped through a trap door, where they meet the five Robot Elders. The Robot Elders reveal that the trial was for entertainment, and command Bender to kill Fry and Leela, but he refuses. The Robot Elders reveal that humans are just being used as a scapegoat to distract the population from the actual problems, lug nut shortages and the incompetent corrupt government of Robot Elders, and that many of the supposed powers humans have that robots fear are in fact made up. The Robot Elders decide to kill the three, citing that they know too much. Fry threatens to breathe fire on the robot elders, throwing them into a state of confusion on whether humans can do that or if that was something that the robots made up. The crew escapes, and is pursued by a horde of robots. As the crew escapes on the winch, the robots stack on top of each other to capture the crew. Bender remembers that he never actually delivered the package, and puts it into the hands of the robot on top. The unbalanced tower and the package falls to the ground, and the robots are showered in much-needed lug nuts, and renounce their human-hating ways. The crew, now en route back to Earth, celebrate Robonikah with Bender. References Explained * The title comes from the album Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy * The robot-populated planet of Chapek 9 is named after Karel Čapek, a Czech writer who coined the term "robot" * When Fry and Leela are initially discovered, the discovering robot cries the shriek from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and later heard the well-known phrase "Intruder alert!" from the 1980 video game Berzerk about humans fighting robots. * The horn that sounded the hunt for humans was the sound an Apple Macintosh makes when it is turned on. * The construction robots Fry and Leela talk to build with Tetris blocks. When the lines are full, a robot panics, and then these pieces disappear. * The movie posters at the robot movie theater are: ** Barbot Streisand in Yentltron (a parody of Barbra Streisand and Yentl) ** Buff Bot the Human Slayer (a parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) This may also be a reference to the use of "buffbots" in multiplayer online games. These alternate characters, or "bots", give (usually magical) performance enhancements, or "buffs" to the main character, or group. ** I Was a Teenage Human (a parody of I Was a Teenage Werewolf) ** It Came From Planet Earth (a parody of It Came From Outer Space) * A billboard on Chapek 9 parodies the Got Milk? advertising campaign with a sign reading "Got Milk? Then you're a human and must be killed" External Links * Episode Transcript Category:Episodes